Standing stones

It was another lovely day at Reilly Cemetery-- not too darned hot (at least not for long), the bugs were flying backwards in the breeze and me and my trusty sidekick got lots done.  We finished mapping the north east quadrant (by far the largest), pulled all the stakes and then ran the grid in the north west quadrant (by far the smallest). No new monuments today, sigh, and I have not yet been able to match the base I found the other day with its headstone-- too many possibilities, but I will see what I can do to narrow down the field.

I've been finding a lot of what I have come to call 'standing stones'. These are small to medium sized stones that appear to have been deliberately erected pointy end up. This reminds me of a part of Simon Schama's A History of Britain (I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure it was that series) where he talks about the potato famine. People were dying everywhere and the priests couldn't keep up, but it seems to me that there was also a price for burying the dead in holy ground. In the grinding poverty and horror of the famine some men buried their children in a patch of ground by the sea and erected stones, like the ones I have found at Reilly Cemetery, as the only marker for these poor little ones. It is not said, but it may have happened in other areas of Ireland as well. Many of the husbands and fathers who buried dead family members at Reilly Cemetery may have remembered, or seen, or done this themselves back in Ireland and they may have brought the tradition to Canada with them.  I can't prove it but the stones I'm finding didn't end up that way on their own and the pastures around the cemetery don't have them, at least not that I have found so far. There are also sections of Reilly Cemetery where the ground is comparatively flat with no stones at all, and it does make you wonder if someone "cleaned" them up, thereby removing the only marker of these graves.

There seems to be a fair bit of interest in having the guided tour of the cemetery, if you are interested you can contact me at the email address for this blog. Long pants and good shoes are recommended as there are still some brambles and the ground is uneven in places.